NPR 2009-10-24

There was a big jump in sales of previously 1 owned homes last month, though a lot of that was likely attributable to a soon to expire 8,000 dollar tax credit for new home buyers. The National Association of Realtors says sales of previously owned homes shot up by 9.4% in September, their biggest rise in some 26 years. Warner Maloney is a spokesman for the Real Estate Industry Trade Group.
 
"First-time buyers are clearly responding to the tax credit, and that is freeing many other sellers to make a trade and buy another home. And it’s helping 2 to bring inventories 3 down. The supply of homes on the market is the lowest we’ve seen in two and a half years."
 
Most analysts 4 expect when home sales numbers come out in the month ahead, they will fall back again with the expiration 5 of the program. For that reason, there have been calls for Congress to extend the plan.
 
There's a reason to hope for less fraud in a second round of elections in Afghanistan. That was the word today from the Obama administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. NPR's Michele Kelemen reports.
 
Special Envoy 6 Richard Holbrooke says he thinks the runoff set for November 7th shows that the constitutional process in Afghanistan is working.
 
"It is reasonable to hope that there will be lesser 7 irregularities this time for several reasons. One, there're only two candidates. Two, there's the experience factor."
 
And he says US forces are now at full strength, ready to go all out to make the election a success. Senator John Kerry, not Holbrooke, laid the diplomatic groundwork for this, persuading Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai to agree to a runoff. When asked about his strained relation to the Afghan leader, Holbrooke said they are fine and appropriate, and that he looks forward to working with Karzai if he is re-elected. Michele Kelemen, NPR News, the State Department.
 
The number of individuals who have contracted swine flu continues to grow according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Federal health officials say already as many people have fallen ill with flu is typical during the regular flu season.
 
Microsoft earnings 8 fell in the first quarter of the fiscal 9 year, but those numbers were much better than expected and helped drive the software-maker’s stock price higher. NPR's Larry Abramson reports.
 
Microsoft announced revenue of just under 13 billion dollars for the quarter that ended on September 30th. That's a 14% decline compared with last year. Net earnings were 40 cents per share, a drop from last year, but again better than expected. Wall Street analysts had predicted a much steeper decline and the improvement is seen as a sign that sales of personal computers and the company's Xbox gaming system are recovering. PC sales have been rising after months of declines. The news comes a day after Microsoft released Windows7, the long-awaited upgrade to its troubled Vista 10 operating system. This week, other tech companies, such as Apple and Google, also announced better-than-expected earnings. Larry Abramson, NPR News, Washington.
 
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 109 points. The NASDAQ lost 10 points today.
 
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Safety investigators 11, looking into details surrounding a 150-mile overflight by a Northwest Airlines jet, say the plane in question had an older model cockpit voice recorder. Officials say they have determined 12 the pilots of the plane en route to Minneapolis flew past their destination at an altitude of 37,000 feet before realizing they’d overshot the airport, forcing them to turn around. The pilots have claimed they were in a heated discussion about airline policy and simply made a mistake. However, because of the older model cockpit voice recorder, National Transportation Safety Board may have a difficult time confirming that.
 
Three militant 13 attacks in Northwest Pakistan killed at least 15 people today, including members of a wedding party whose bus struck a roadside bomb. From Islamabad, NPR’s Julie McCarthy reports.
 
The wedding goers became victims traveling on a road in the agency of Mohmand, one of seven that make up Pakistan's violence-wracked Federally Administered Tribal 14 Areas known as FATA. The name suggests that the government is in charge, but the reality is that FATA is a lawless area infested 15 with militants 16. In the FATA agency of South Waziristan, a week-old military offensive against the Taliban is aimed at re-establishing government authority in the district. The army said today it killed 13 militants and detained six. Violence struck Peshawar again when a controlled car bomb exploded outside a restaurant in an upscale area of the city, seriously injuring at least a dozen people. Julie McCarthy, NPR News, Islamabad.
 
Some former employees of Eastman Kodak were in a New York courtroom today, voicing their objection to a proposed settlement with the Rochester-based company. It issues a 21.4 million dollar proposed deal to settle lawsuits 17 by black employees at the company who claimed they were paid and promoted less than their white counterparts.